


Anxious Fuel

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Banter, Choking, Desperation, Dreams, Kissing, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 00:23:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3748516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quick one-shot; Harry sees his old professor at Hogwarts, after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anxious Fuel

**Author's Note:**

> There's a link [right here](https://hpkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org) to the new Harry Potter Kink Meme, an anonymous prompt and fill meme hosted on Dreamwidth. I fill prompts here on the meme, and it's a lot of fun, so if there's anything you feel like prompting to the anonymous world of HP Kink, go right ahead!

“Please,” Harry says harshly, voice coming thick with a sudden and unexpected desperation; the bat has him pinned against the dungeon wall, the cold stone of it sinking damp ice into Harry's back through his robes, and Snape's fingers, slender and seemingly bright in the dim light of the dank little hall, tighten around his throat.

He doesn't know why he'd said it; the plea had slipped off his traitorous tongue as easily as it was muscle memory, but Harry has never begged from Snape before, and has never had any intention to.

“Please, Mr Potter?” The repetition is phrased as a question, and Snape is staring at him with that quietly expectant expression, black gaze boring into Harry's own; he tries to fidget in the older man's hold, but it only makes him gasp as Snape presses his palm more firmly to the line of Harry's neck, cutting off his air for a fraction of a second.

He'd just wanted to talk, and Snape had thrown him against the wall as soon he  _saw_ him – Harry had just wanted to talk.

“I just- I didn't- I need to-”

“Eloquent as always, Mr Potter: one would hope that by now you'd have learned to utilize that tongue of yours adequately.” Snape takes a fluid step closer, letting his hand rise on Harry's throat so his finger and thumb are only a little beneath the corners of his jaw – his fingers are warm, and it's weird, because for some reason Harry always had an idea that Snape's fingers would be freezing. Snape's chest is only an inch or so from Harry's own, and the close proximity forces the other's arm to rest on Harry's chest; somehow, Harry had always thought of Snape as a tall, skinny man, but he's not that much taller than Harry, really, and Harry's not tall himself. “But then,” Snape's voice drops yet softer – it's always soft, always in an almost-whisper of a tone, but now it softens further. It sounds almost intimate, “I suppose you prefer to use your tongue to boast of your endeavours than to suitably communicate your needs.”

“I don't boast. I've never boas-” Harry tries to heave in a breath, but Snape's hand is squeezing, and Harry lets out a sort of keen of choked noise, standing up on his tip-toes as if to get his neck out of the professor's reach, but Snape just follows him, squeezing ever tighter and regarding him with a look of cruel amusement. “I bet you're getting off on this.” Harry manages to choke out, because it's the most biting thing he can choose to say: Snape's amused expression does not falter. He just raises an eyebrow, and the slight upturn of his lip becomes a smirk.

Is he getting off on this? Harry feels heat rush through him at the thought, and he wonders again why a desperate plea (for something, but for what?) had been the first thing to come out of his mouth when Snape had pinned him in place. Because Harry begs, he does beg, but it's usually some Muggle man, anonymous, who won't recognize the scar on Harry's forehead and will hurt him without care.

Snape lets go of his neck, and then he turns, striding off into the darkness. Even as he clutches at his own neck and massages the abused flesh, feeling where fingerprints will no doubt be bruised purple into the skin, he follows Snape. He can't let him walk away, can't let him flee, but Snape doesn't look scared at all – he walks with purpose, robes billowing in the neat and measured fashion they always have, dramatic but somehow controlled.

“Wait- wait, where are you going!?” He can't help but be frustrated after a few minutes of walking through barely lit dungeon corridors – he doesn't know this bit of the castle as well as he does the rest, and though he racks his brains he can't see any landmarks that are familiar. Nothing is familiar, and there are no landmarks here in the bowels of Hogwarts, where every single brick and torch has been carefully arranged to look exactly the same from one twisting corridor to the next. No wonder Snape likes it down here.

Snape disappears abruptly, and Harry stops short in the corridor where it meets onto another – but is he to go left, or right? He strains to hear, but he can hear neither the tell-tale swish of Snape's outer robe nor the quiet click of his boots on the eternally damp flagstone, and no other noise is to be heard.

Harry looks to the left: the corridor stretches on into darkness where torch light apparently runs out; he sees no fired lamps after a few metres, and he just stares into the blackness, as if Snape will loom out of it with all the threatening promise of a basilisk. Harry looks to the right: the corridor is well lit all the way along, but Harry can't really tell how long it goes on for. It seems infinite, from here, the hall lit by a soft greenish light that seems to emanate from the left wall and not from the torches themselves – and wouldn't that be exactly like Snape, to lead him into some labyrinthine tunnel where every path is perpetual?

Harry bites his lip, and he looks forwards, wishing he had the Marauder's Map with him to help him decide. He stops short, then, head tilting slightly as he stares.

The fixture in front of him, fastened neatly to the wall, isn't where it's supposed to be. Harry looks around, to the left, to the right, to the corridor he'd come from, to make sure, and it's not – all of the fixtures are evenly separated by three metres or so, and this one can't be half that distance from the fixtures on either side.

He hesitates, just for a second, and then he steps forwards, reaching for the bottom of the torch to see if he can push it one way or another, as a lever of sorts, but as soon as his fingers brush the wood the stone shifts back with a hiss of brick on brick, and then the wall in front of him abruptly disassembles itself, each brick (and the torch) fleeing to the left and right.

Harry is looking at a set of neat, ordered steps, and he can't see what's beyond the arch of the new doorway except to see more green-tinged light filter down. He swallows, steeling himself for whatever horrible potions lab he's going to walk into, and he steps through the little arch, beginning to make his way up the steps. His feet are loud on the floor, even though he's only wearing trainers, and he can't help but feel a little insecure about the noise; he forgets, almost immediately, about his insecurity, and instead he goes still, staring up with wide eyes and an open mouth.

The room he's in is square, and there are two or three ebony doors that seem to lead off elsewhere. It's furnished neatly but sparsely, impersonally, with a few tables and chairs here and there of the same ebony wood; it must be a study room of sorts, Harry thinks dimly, but how could you study here? The ceiling above is enchanted, like the one in the Great Hall, but instead of effortlessly melding itself with the night sky above, this ceiling appears to be made up of the lake outside. The soft green light is from the sun outside, Harry knows, filtering through icy water and green weed, but it's made to shadow as the squid passes over. Harry's never looked at it so closely before, never seen those thick, pink tentacles slide through the water – it's so graceful, he can't help but realize, its movements so hypnotizing to watch.

“You have exceeded my expectations, Mr Potter,” comes Snape's soft voice from behind him, but Harry doesn't turn, captivated by the fluid, lazy movements of the leviathan above them. The squid's right eye comes into sight, huge and black in the darkness, and Harry realizes he can't tell if it's looking at him or not, “I had expected you to merely wander into the corridors.”

“Torch didn't match the others.” comes Harry's absent-minded reply, and he continues to stare upwards, unable to tear his eyes away, even as Snape steps right up behind him, his chest only a fraction of an inch from Harry's back. He can feel the older man's breath on his neck, and it makes him tremble.

“No,” Snape agrees in that soft, silky tone, and then he says, “you ought have been sorted into Slytherin, Potter, if watching marine life so intrigues you.”

“There's no view like this in the Slytherin common room,” Harry says sharply, turning around and looking at Snape with a suddenly furrowed brow – the idea that he'd been missing out on seeing that from below rather than from above, when the squid barely tickles the lake's surface, irritates him for some reason, and when Snape arches one of his own eyebrows, expression quietly and calculatedly superior, Harry realizes his error. “I mean-”

“Shut up, Potter.” Snape says smoothly, and again he catches Harry with that dark stare, and Harry can see nothing in his eyes, no emotion, nothing. Harry glances to the man's mouth, and it's to glean some hint as to what Snape wants, but the thin line of the other's lips, twisted into a cruel little smirk, catch his attention. “You've a wandering attention.”

“I'm not your student any more, Snape, and I-”

“You are not my student, Mr Potter,” interrupts the bat with a voice that's barely a murmur, every syllable ringing on the air with impossible resonance, “that's quite correct. And with that in mind,” Snape's hands reach, and for a moment he thinks they're going to grasp at his throat again, but he merely adjusts the fastenings of Harry's robes. Harry feels heat flush into his cheeks, humiliated,but Snape doesn't comment on him being unkempt, and just looks a little pleased with himself, “I should learn to control my tongue, were I you.”

“Well, you're not me,” Harry retorts defiantly, and goes on to say, “What do you know, anyway?”

“What do I know?” Snape's twisted smirk becomes a more natural smile, but for some reason that simple curve of lips looks _wrong_ on the older man's sallow face. “Mr Potter, I have always felt,” Snape's fingers stop adjusting the fastenings of Harry's outer robe to symmetry, and instead flicks the first one undone, “that you are so very focused on your dunderheaded self,” the second fastening is undone, “that you almost never stoop to wonder what your inferiors might know.” There's a pause. Snape deftly unfastens the third, and he removes his hands in a graceful fashion, watching the outer robe drop to the floor; it's a deep wine red, meant to complement the rose of the underpiece, but it's a modern style – no dozens of buttons like those on Snape's robes.

“I never said you were my inferior,” Harry says, and Snape looks at him with that unreadable gaze of his; somehow, Harry knows what he expects, and adds, with a casual shrug of his shoulders (a provocation), “sir.”

There is a sudden tension between them, and the silence is thick, as if abruptly tangible.

“Why are you here, Mr Potter?” Snape asks, and it's not phrased as an accusation. It's made supremely clear he's expected to answer, but the question itself seems merely curious, casual. If that's the case, then why is he finding it so hard to force his tongue to answer?

“I wanted to talk.”

“Did you?”

“To you.”

“As I might have guessed.”

“About- about my mum-”

“Leave, then.” Harry stares at him.

“What?”

“I said leave. If you wish to speak to me about your mother, Mr Potter, I've no desire to speak to you. Off you go.”

“No.”

“You had something else you wished to discuss?”

“Yeah, how much of a prick you are.” Harry leans, grabs at his robe from the ground, but he doesn't pull away, not yet.

“Mr Potter, I advise you learn to hold your tongue.”

“That's the third time you've mentioned my tongue this evening.”

“You've learned to count, Mr Potter, how terribly impressive.” He looks like he's still waiting for something, and Harry doesn't understand it because he feels all hot and flushed and embarrassed, and all he really wants is for Snape to just come out with it. He feels the cold all of a sudden, given that he's wearing just his under robe, given that Snape had thrown the outer piece to the floor, and he leans closer, bridging the gap between the both of them.

Snape looks down at him, pale, thin lips parting just slightly, and he examines the way Harry clutches his own robe in his hands, Harry's face, with that cold, impassive stare.

“You-” Harry doesn't get to finish the sentence.

One of Snape's clever hands is swiftly catching him by the back of the head and the taller man leans, pressing his lips (they're dry) against Harry's own, and he's crowding Harry backwards with such speed he notices nothing else in the room – he doesn't care that he drops the bunched fabric in his hands because Snape's left hand is around his neck, doesn't notice that grindylows are dancing where the squid was moments ago because Snape's right is tightening on hair, doesn't notice that he's trembling with excitement because Snape's got him against a wall and has his knee between Harry's legs, has his thigh pressed against his crotch.

“You've got your mother's eyes.” Snape says as he pulls back, and Harry stares at him, arousal abruptly cut off; Snape's smirk becomes a normal-but-wrong smile becomes a grin becomes a comicbook LEER, and Harry stares at him with growing horror as blood begins to bubble up under the white collar of his robe's underpiece, soaking into the fabric and spurting up the side of his jaw.

“What- no-”

And Snape is laughing, a harsh, horrible sound that becomes high-pitched and awful--

Harry wakes up, drenched in sweat and gasping, and he throws all his covers off to the side, suddenly detesting the way they cling, half-wet, to his naked skin. Harry looks blearily to the clock, but no light filters in through the gaps in the curtains – it's not even six yet, and the sun's not up.

Still heaving breaths into his aching chest, he grasps for his glasses, wiping his sweat-dripped nose with the back of his hand before putting them on. What in Merlin's name was that?

Harry huffs out a laboured exhalation, and he looks to the corner, where the robes for his Hogwarts interview neatly settle on their hanger beside the mirror: wine red over rose.

“Stupid dream.” Harry mutters, and he stands up, rubbing at his hair and feeling suddenly disgusted at the amount he'd sweated. He's going to go to his interview, get the bloody job, and stop worrying. Snape doesn't even teach any more, and Snape wouldn't want to fuck him, stupid thought, stupid-

“Yes, dearie,” agrees the mirror to the corner of the room in a very drowsy tone, “of course.”


End file.
